The heart of the Perry case and why LGBT families should not distance themselves from single mothers

If supporters of Prop 8 have standing to appeal Judge Walker's order in Perry v. Schwarzenegger (even though the state did not appeal it), the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals will decide whether Prop 8 violates the federal constitution. If you listened to the oral argument yesterday, you heard the term "rational basis" used a lot. That term means something in constitutional law. Every time the state puts people in categories -- classifies them -- it must have at least a "rational basis" for doing so. Charles Cooper, arguing for the Prop 8 supporters, therefore had to say what the rational basis is for allowing different-sex couples to marry but denying that right to same-sex couples.

Here's what he said. The key purpose of marriage is to manage the one relationship that naturally produces children, often unintentionally. Society's interests are threatened by unwanted pregnancy because a child raised by "its" (his word) mother alone violates society's vital interests. Society will have to step in and assist that single parent. ("That is what usually happens," he said). He argued as an "undeniable fact" that children raised in that circumstance have poor outcomes. In the middle of this last sentence, Judge Reinhardt said that sounded like a good argument for prohibiting divorce, but how does it relate to same-sex couples raising children?

His question caused chuckles in the courtroom, but here is its constitutional significance: The rational basis test requires that the state's classification be rationally related to achieving a legitimate state interest. So, first, what is the legitimate state interest? In general, providing for the welfare of children is of course legitimate, but, in this context, Cooper, on behalf of opponents of same-sex marriage, is essentially saying that the state has a legitimate interest in preventing births to single mothers. I strenuously object to this, on its own terms. And I wish supporters of same-sex marriage would object to it as well.

Instead, the emphasis among gay rights advocates is the approach reflected in Judge Reinhardt's question. It assumes that the state does have a legitimate interest in preventing births to unmarried mothers but suggests that keeping same-sex couples from marrying does nothing to achieve that objective. Judge Reinhardt's comment about divorce doesn't directly tackle bearing a child outside of marriage but does explicitly address a corrolary principle that opponents of same-sex marriage adhere to, which is that children do best raised by their married mother and father. Banning divorce would result in more couples staying married, so it does bear a rational relationship to having children raised by their married parents. Of course there is no political support for banning divorce, so no state is going to do that.

As a matter of constitutional argument, it is completely proper to focus on the relationship between the classification and the state interest. If the classification is not rationally related to the state interest then it should fail as a matter of Equal Protection law. So if banning same-sex marriage won't result in fewer heterosexual pregnancies outside of marriage, then it is irrational. (Or if allowing same-sex marriage won't result in more heterosexual pregnancies outside of marriage, then it is irrational.)

But I want to directly address the alleged state interest in reducing births outside of marriage. I wish that gay rights advocates would say directly that the state has no business prefering heterosexual motherhood within marriage over heterosexual motherhood outside of marriage. I do not believe that should be considered a "legitimate state interest." The arguments from social science about the well-being of children, which Charles Cooper referred to as "undeniable fact," are overstated, mischaracterized, covertly political, and flat out wrong. I've written about this in many posts about spending federal dollars on "marriage promotion." Consistently, the right wing argues that poverty is the result of unmarried births and that marriage is the way to end poverty. When that reasoning prevails, poverty looks like the moral failing of individuals who do not marry, rather than the result of systemic policies that reinforce income inequality that could be addressed through laws and programs designed to reduce that inequality. We know how to end poverty but we lack the political will to do it.

Charles Cooper's argument about the rational basis for opposing same-sex marriage is that if you redefine the word "marriage" to include same-sex couples you change the institution of marriage and make it something other than the place society provides for the well-being of children born, often accidentally, from the sexual relationship of the two participants. Unfortunately, it's an argument that has been successful in some state courts. I believe it fails the rational basis test in the way that Prop 8 opponents argued, but I also wants the gay rights movement to recognize its common cause with single mothers. Family structure does not determine child outcome. All children need government policies that optimally serve their physical, emotional, and educational needs. That's the gay rights position I champion.

The NY Times should not be the last word on marriage and health

As soon as I saw the New York Times article on marriage and health I knew exactly where to turn next -- the blog of Bella DePaulo, a psychologist whose work most convincingly debunks the so-called health advantages of marriage. I was not disappointed; she had responded to the piece when it first appeared on line last week. Her response also refers back to her previous well-documented posts challenging the claims of researchers whose work forms the backbone of the organizations and individuals (including President Obama) who claim more marriage will mean fewer social problems.

Earlier this year, DePaulo wrote an essay for Huffington Post explaining why Harvard University Press was right to decline to publish Maggie Gallagher and Linda Waite's book, The Case for Marriage, which is virtually the Bible of the "marriage promotion" movement. Tara Parker-Pope, author of the NY Times article (and a forthcoming book on marriage) should have read DePaulo's critique before relying uncritically on Waite's conclusions.

The NY Times piece does have nuance, but it would have benefitted from attention to the work of scholars and researchers associated with the Council on Contemporary Families, which held its 2010 conference this weekend. Among the "unconventional wisdom" on their website is a longitudinal study of 2000 adults by Cornell professor Kelly Musick comparing the happiness level of individuals who remained single, got married, or began living with a partner without getting married. And if we're just looking at physical health, there's some intriguing research from Emily Fitzgibbons Shafer, a Stanford doctoral candidate, that African-American women are more likely to become obese if they are married than if they are never married and don't live with a partner; and marriage is associated with a modest increase in Body Mass Index for African-American, Hispanic, and white men and women.

A recently published anthology of essays by CCF scholars, Families As They Really Are, is also a welcome antidote to the oversimplistic and often misleading claims about the one-size-fits-all marriage model.

Perry v. Schwarzenegger -- week three preview -- the defendants will make it about gender

The argument that children need to grow up with a father is not an argument aimed primarily at lesbian couples raising children. It's the argument at the core of the right-wing "marriage movement" whose agenda includes federal funding for a "marriage promotion" industry, restrictions on no-fault divorce, and increased stigma for births outside marriage. The primary tenet of this movement is that the decline of life-long marriage is responsible for all our social problems, a point of view that deliberately ignores poverty, income inequality, poor education, and inadequate health care, for example, as root causes of poor outcomes for children.

This movement gained traction throughout the 1990's, before any state allowed same-sex couples to marry or even enter civil unions. As the movement for marriage equality grew, it challenged opposition from these "marriage movement" organizations by saying, essentially, if you think marriage is so important for children then you should support same-sex marriage as better for the children those couples raise. To continue opposing same-sex marriage, these groups had to shift their argument from "marriage is crucial to the well-being of children and society" to "heterosexual marriage is crucial to the well-being of children and society," and to do this they had to talk about how much gender matters. It's not marriage, they now say, but marriage between a man and a woman. And then they refined the argument even further to stress the importance to a child of being raised by his/her married biological parents.

So as the defenders of Proposition 8 present their witnesses this week, expect testimony on gender differences to play a significant role. That makes the study published last week by Tim Biblarz and Judith Stacey especially timely. In How Does the Gender of Parents Matter?, published in the February issue of Journal of Marriage and Family, these two sociologists review all the research used to support the proposition that families headed by married, biological parents are best for children, and they reach a different conclusion. They conclude that the best scientific evidence shows instead that "compared to all other family forms, families headed by (at least) two committed, compatible parents are generally best for children." This is true, they conclude, "irrespective of parental gender, marital status, sexual identity, or biogenetic status."

They write, "Current claims that children need both a mother and father are spurious because they attribute to the gender of the parents benefits that correlate primarily with the number and marital status of a child's parents since infancy. At this point no research supports the widely held conviction that the gender of parents matters for child well-being." (emphasis mine). This is exactly what renowned child development expert Michael Lamb testified to last week at the Prop 8 trial. Expect pro-Prop 8 witness David Blankenhorn to testify how much gender does matter, although I wonder how he will qualify as an expert. He is certainly a writer and an advocate, but he is not a social scientist or mental health clinician or researcher. I am truly looking forward to his cross-examination, and I expect this latest Biblarz/Stacey article -- from a peer-reviewed professional journal -- to play a prominent role.

News from Lavender Law -- the latest adoption/foster parenting bans

It's not called Lavender Law anymore, but I can't help myself. (Sixth Ave will never be Avenue of the Americas to me...). Its official name is the National LGBT Bar Association Career Fair & Conference, but by any name this is the annual gathering of LGBT lawyers, law students, and law profs (and some straight advocates who work on our issues). This year's conference is taking place in Brooklyn.

Today I attended a session on "The New Adoption and Foster Care Battle: Cohabitation Bans." Law professor Carlos Ball started off with the history of bans on adoption or foster parenting by lesbians, gay men, or same-sex couples. The first such ban in 1977 (Florida...hopefully on its way out) predated by more than 20 years the first ban on adoption or foster parenting by anyone living with an unmarried partner -- gay or straight (Utah...not on its way out).

Kara Suffredini of Family Equality Council then described recent efforts - largely unsuccessful - to legislate such cohabitation bans. In Tennessee in 2008, for example, the state budget office reported that instituting such a ban would cost the state millions of dollars, given the additional children who would remain in state care. That stopped the bill dead in its tracks. Naomi Goldberg of the Williams Institute followed with the economic analysis she and Lee Badgett performed for Kentucky. Based on the census data on the number of same-sex and unmarried different-sex couples with adopted or foster children in the state, and the current number of children in the foster care system (7027), Williams Institute predicted 630 children would not get foster home placements -- thereby requiring more expensive and less desirable institutional placements, and 85 children would not be adopted and would therefore remain in state care. The projected cost: $5.3 million. That bill never got out of committee. (The Williams Institute also reports that if Florida drops its ban on gay adoptions, the state will save $3.4 million in its first year). Of course no one can quantify the human cost to the children who remain in group care or never get permanent families.

Finally, Leslie Cooper, ACLU's litigator extraordinaire, discussed the litigation challenging the initiative enacted in Arkansas last year that also bans anyone living with a gay or straight unmarried partner from adopting or fostering. (And a gay married couple doesn't count because Arkansas does not recognize them as married.) The state is defending the ban by pointing to the poorer outcomes for children raised by cohabiting different sex couples as compared with married different sex couples. It's a regurgitation of the right-wing marriage movement's basic argument that all our social problems result from the decline of life-long heterosexual marriage. The ACLU knows the drill and is well-equipped to respond. The case is currently in the discovery stage.

It's a matter of some fascination to me that the right wing has decided that it is easier to defend a foster care/adoption ban on cohabiting couples, gay and straight, than a ban limited to gay men and lesbians. Although Florida is defending its gay ban with every discredited argument in the book (for the details, and the meticulous responses by the ACLU, check out this website), the right is capitalizing on the same ideology that gets us federally funded "marriage promotion" when it argues that unmarried couples should not foster or adopt. The panelists agreed that the real target of these bans is...gay men and lesbians; that although proponents no doubt believe that unmarried straight couples should be discouraged from raising children, the ban is primarily a means to the end of banning gay adoption without having to defend such a ban directly.

New from the Alternatives to Marriage Project

It's always a good day to check out what's happening with the Alternatives to Marriage Project. They recently expanded their on-line resources with more facts, experts, reports, etc to counter the dominance of the "marriage movement" position that the decline of life long heterosexual marriage is responsible for all our social problems. They are also in the forefront of a growing movement to stop using federal anti-poverty funds on "marriage promotion."

Check them out.

TANF reauthorization next year -- the stakes are high

President Clinton signed "welfare reform" right before the 1996 election; he signed DOMA during the same period. The first reauthorization, during the Bush administration, added the funding of "marriage promotion," which Obama is continuing. The next reauthorization must occur by September 2010.

Now comes an important report from the feminist legal organization Legal Momentum, demonstrating an enormous drop in the number of women and children receiving TANF benefits and a concommitant rise in the number of single-mother families living in extreme poverty. Since 1996, the number of welfare recipients has declined by two-thirds. This is not because "welfare reform" has succeeded in reducing poverty. Rather, there has been a 56% increase in the number of single-mother families with annual incomes less than $3000. When mothers who have left welfare are employed, their average earnings are likely to be less than the poverty level for a family of three.

The safety net has been shredded. There is no longer meaningful federal oversight. If states reduce the amount of money spent on welfare, they can use the surplus in their "block grants" for non-welfare purposes. Caseload reduction brings benefits to the states. These reductions do not have to be tied to any measure of the well-being of poor families.

The 2001 report of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force remains the best analysis of the connection between "welfare reform" and LGBT people. I hope they get involved during the upcoming reauthorization as well.

Legal Momentum will play a major role in shaping the advocacy around reauthorization. They opposed federal funding of "marriage promotion" before and will oppose it this time around as well. They have formed the EndPovertyNow coalition. To join it, send an email with the subject line "join" to tcasey@legalmomentum.org.

Pressure needed to end federal funding of marriage promotion

Thanks to Dana Rudolph for pointing out this article on Obama's continued funding of marriage promotion. The article, by Amy DePaul, quotes with no attribution from a letter I wrote on behalf of several opponents of continued funding. My blog about the letter, with a link to it, is here. Obama's 2010 budget eliminates abstinence-only sex education, but there is a huge overlap between the groups receiving that funding and those getting marriage promotion funds. Considering the GAO report documenting poor oversight of the use of marriage promotion funds, there's reason to fear misdirection of those funds.

If Obama won't eliminate these funds it will be up to Congress to act, especially when TANF comes up for reauthorization next year. Expect the feminist group Legal Momentum to play a big role (good contact there: Tim Casey). Also, the Alternatives to Marriage Project will weigh in as much as they can. Support these groups and urge them to do as much as they can. But it's equally important to make sure that LGBT groups weigh in. They may like marriage, but they can't like the well-documented anti-gay bias of these efforts. I fear that many LGBT groups won't want to appear anti-marriage. Forget that. I don't want federal funding to promote same-sex marriage anymore than I want it for different-sex marriage. I think the LBGT groups have a real role to play here, if they will just step up and be heard.

More opposition to Leah Sears

I was shocked at the Washington Post's above the fold front-page story last Sunday about Georgia Supreme Court Justice Leah Sears as a possible nominee for the US Supreme Court. I have blogged twice in the past about Justice Sears's unsuitability.

I sent a letter to the Post, which they did not publish, so I'm posting it here:

Leah Sears doesn’t belong on the US Supreme Court, and it’s not because of her relationship with Justice Clarence Thomas (Front page, May 10, 2009). It’s because she used her position as Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court to further an ideological position that bodes ill for her judgment. Justice Sears is a board member of the Institute for American Values, an organization whose publications consistently argue that family forms other than a married mother and father threaten child well-being and the very fabric of society. Last year, she arranged for the Georgia Supreme Court to co-host a two-day, public conference with IAV, thus giving an official, state imprimatur to a highly contested viewpoint with enormous implications for public policy. The conference excluded eminent researchers and academics whose views diverge from those of IAV about what causes bad child outcomes and where to look for solutions. The program was dominated by opponents of gay and lesbian parents and/or marriage for same-sex couples. Justice Sears had no business aligning her court with one side of a controversial family policy agenda. That disqualifies her from serving on the US Supreme Court.

Georgia Equality spoke out against Justice Sears today because she is planning to "join" the Institute for American Values when she leaves the court, but she is already a board member of the organization, so I would say she joined them long ago! Thank you, Jeff Graham of Georgia Equality, for getting great press coverage on why Justice Sears does not belong on the Supreme Court.

End federal funding of marriage promotion: Part I

The Obama agenda is filled with many ideas that will help LGBT families, like equal adoption rights, repeal of DOMA, and extension of federal recognition for civil unions. He also supports comprehensive sex education. But he has been silent on the federal funding of marriage promotion, a topic of many of my posts.

So this post is the first of a periodic series on ending that funding. Obama wants to cut wasteful spending from the federal budget. Start with eliminating what has not been spent of the $750,000,000 for marriage promotion, and don't add any more.

George Bush appointed Wade Horn as the Assistant Secretary for Children and Families at HHS, giving him control over marriage promotion and abstinence-only sex education funding as well as other important family policy concerns. Horn used the position to fund an infrastructure that supports his right-wing ideological agenda.

That's why the person Obama appoints to this position is so critical. Last month, I wrote a letter to then Secretary-Designate Tom Daschle on behalf several groups (Alternatives to Marriage Project, Family Equality Council, Legal Momentum, National Center for Lesbian Rights, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund, and SIECUS) and noted academics, Anna Marie Smith, Jean Hardisty, and Judith Stacey. Read it here. Add your voice. If federal family policy is going to truly value all families, it needs to start at the top.

Not Leah Sears on the US Supreme Court!

Just a day after my post on the right-wing "marriage movement" conference at the Georgia Supreme Court, an article by Justin Jouvenal at salon.com named Leah Sears, the court's Chief Justice, as a possible contender for a seat on the US Supreme Court.

This would be a disaster for LGBT families. As a board member of the Institute for American Values, Leah Sears is a core part of a movement that blames every social problem on the decline of life-long heterosexual marriage. One of IAV's most recent publications argues that fathers uniquely matter in the lives of children. This is a classic component of the argument made against parenting (and marriage) by lesbian couples, as well as single mothers. Yet a universally acknowledged expert on fathers, Dr. Michael Lamb, who has done decades of research on fathers, concludes otherwise. Read a summary of Lamb's testimony in the recent challenge to Florida's ban on adoption by lesbians and gay men.

On the subject of gender and parenting, here's how the judge in that case summarized Lamb's testimony:

Dr. Lamb opined that the assumption that children need a mother and a father in order to be well adjusted is outdated and not supported by the research. According to the witness, there is no optimal gender combination of parents; neither men nor women have a greater ability to parent. Additionally, today, two-parent households are less attached to static roles than in the past. Moreover, there is a well established and generally accepted consensus in the field that children do not need a parent of each gender to adjust healthily.

Take that, Leah Sears. But take it someplace other than the US Supreme Court.

THE RIGHT-WING "MARRIAGE MOVEMENT:" IDEOLOGY MASQUERADING AS EDUCATION AT THE GEORGIA SUPREME COURT

Thanks to Nan Hunter for alerting me to an astonishing "marriage movement" event, a "summit on marriage and family" co-hosted by David Blankenhorn's Institute for American Values and the Georgia Supreme Court. I am horrified that a body with the power to rule on the well-being of children with LGBT parents, namely a state supreme court, is giving its imprimatur to one of the most vocal organizations in the country that opposes legal recognition of same-sex couples and parents.

How did this happen? Well the Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, Leah Sears, is on the board of directors of the Institute for American Values! She is on record espousing the core position -- as wrong as it is -- that the decline of life long heterosexual marriage is the cause of all our social problems. Sears is leaving the court next year, so she needn't fear criticism for associating the Georgia Supreme Court with a political agenda. (And the conference program says this is the "first annual" conference of its kind; okay, that's scary!)

But maybe more significantly, Chief Justice Sears may well think this conference isn't subject to criticism for furthering a political agenda. The "marriage movement" rhetoric that the decline of life-long heterosexual marriage is responsible for all our social problems has such mainstream support -- after all our federal government funds "marriage promotion" -- that to some ears it sounds like a statement of fact.

There will be one speaker who supports marriage for same-sex couples, Jonathan Rauch, but he actually accepts every tenet of the "marriage movement" except the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage. So no one at this conference will present a different view about the cause -- and therefore the solutions -- to our social problems. In fact, luncheon speaker Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, whose 1993 "Dan Quayle Was Right" Atlantic Monthly article first laid out the ideology of the "marriage movement" (and was soundly critiqued by NYU sociologist Judith Stacey), appears poised to link the nation's financial crisis to the decline of marriage! Why didn't I guess that would be coming?

And just in case there's any question about this conference's agenda on gender roles, there will be continuous screenings of the DVD Hardwired to Connect, which emphasizes differences between boys and girls.

These folks are dangerous. Read a comprehensive critique of their positions in chapter 4 of my book.

ARKANSAS ADVOCATES FOR CHILDREN NEED YOUR HELP!

With the presidential campaign front and center and the votes on marriage in California, Florida, and Arizona getting lots of attention, I'm worried that the fight over adoption and foster parenting by unmarried same-sex and different-sex couples in Arkansas is being overlooked. This would be truly a tragedy -- mostly for the children of Arkansas. But it would also be an unwelcome boost for the nationwide anti-gay movement. It's a movement that idealizes heterosexual marriage and disparages all other family forms -- hence the ban on unmarried straight couples as well.

Watch this video. Send it around. Get it to anyone who knows anyone who votes in Arkansas. Spread the word to vote NO on Initiated Act 1. The Foster Care Alumni of America oppose it. A group of retired Arkansas judges oppose it. The Arkansas Department of Human Services is licensing unmarried couples as foster parents, and the Governor, Mike Beebe, opposes Initiated Act 1 (not loudly enough).

And send donations to Arkansas Families First!

BLOG ACTION DAY: ENDING POVERTY -- PROMOTING MARRIAGE IS NOT THE WAY

We really could end poverty if we wanted to....Unfortunately, for the past eight years the government's primary strategy for ending poverty has been "marriage promotion." The right wing reiterates the lie that all of our social problems -- including illiteracy, homelessness, substance abuse, violence, infant mortality, chronic illness, crime and, of course, poverty -- are caused by the decline in life long heterosexual marriage. This ideology then lets government off the hook for its policies that maintain tremendous income inequality.

Sociologist Scott Coltrane has documented that the funders of such right wing think tanks as the Heritage Foundation also fund organizations that push marriage as the solution to poverty, such as the Institute for American Values. The Alternatives to Marriage Project has published "Let Them East Wedding Rings," a fine place to start in critiquing "marriage promotion" as the solution to poverty.

For a real solution, try last year's release from the Center for American Progress, "From Poverty to Prosperity: A National Strategy to Cut Poverty in Half." The report makes 12 basic recommendations. Marriage is not on its list of poverty-reducing strategies. And read Blame Welfare, Ignore Poverty and Inequality, co-authored by leading anti-poverty law professor Joel Handler. The book criticizes those who demonize single mothers while ignoring the institutionalized economic and social structures that cause poverty and inequality. Marriage is also not on Handler's list of proposals for ending poverty.

Can we go from books and reports to action? Mark Greenberg, policy director of the Center for Law and Social Policy, was the Executive Director of the Center for American Progress Task Force on Poverty. I say President Obama should make him Secretary of HHS.

UPCOMING FEMINIST CONFERENCE ON MARRIAGE AT UCLA

I'll be speaking later this month at a conference at UCLA called, "State of the Union: Marriage in the Shadow of Electoral Politics." It's sponsored by the Center for the Study of Women, with co-sponsorship by, among others, the Williams Institute, the country's pre-eminent gay rights research center.

If you're familiar with my book you don't need to come to hear me, but some of the other speakers are less well known outside academia than they should be. So if you can get to LA, you might want to come by to hear them.

Take Cornell government professor Anna Marie Smith. She's been decrying so-called "welfare reform" for its policing of female sexuality. Along with Martha Fineman and Gwendolyn Mink, she wrote, "No Promotion of Marriage in TANF [Temporary Assistance to Needy Families]," a critique of the Bush administration's emphasis on marriage promotion. Two chapters of her book, Welfare Reform and Sexual Regulation, the introduction and the chapter "Feminist Visions," can be read on her website.

At the conference, Professor Smith will be critiquing Barack Obama's "responsible fatherhood" initiatives. From the first moment I heard Obama speak about such matters, I've been wondering if his vision was any more feminist, any more supportive of single mothers raising children, than the policies of his two predecessors. I'm looking forward to finding out.

NYU sociology professor Judith Stacey will speak at the conference about the relationship between legal recognition of same-sex marriage and legal recognition of polygamy. Professor Stacey is a strong feminist and a long-time supporter of LGBT families. She has testified as an expert witness in support of same-sex marriage and in support of gay and lesbian parenting. She bucked conventional wisdom some years back when, in a co-authored article, she questioned the position of gay rights advocates that children raised by lesbians or gay men were no different from those raised by heterosexuals. Instead, she argued that children raised by lesbian and gay parents were indeed likely as a group to show some differences from children raised by heterosexual parents, although she was emphatic that differences did not mean deficits, and she rejected any discrimination against same-sex couples raising children. When right wing groups used her article to oppose LGBT parents, Professor Stacey loudly denounced those groups and their misue of her work.

This time around Professor Stacey will be challenging those in the LGBT community who wish to distance themselves as far as possible from the arguments in support of polygamy, plural marriage, polyamory, or any other non-monogamous form of sexual union. Here's a blog posting that presents some of her ideas.

It's going to be a great day. If you do come, please introduce yourself to me!

MARRIAGE FOR 17-YR-OLD BRISTOL PALIN -- HOW 1950's!

Sarah Palin's 17 year old daughter, Bristol, is pregnant. So why no uproar from conservative Christians (as Sarah Palin describes herself), or from those abstinence-only sex-education Republicans?? Because she's marrying her boyfriend, Levi Johnston, that's why!

How 1950's! That's the decade that saw a peak number of teenage pregnancies (the national teen birth rate reached a peak in 1957, at 96 births per 1,000 women ages 15-19.) Half the pregnancies resulted in "shotgun weddings" to preserve the young woman's honor. Those marriages didn't fare too well, but Bristol's is sure to last through the November election, which is all that really matters, right? (Of those young women who did not marry, over 25,000 a year were sent to more than 200 unwed-mother homes where they gave birth secretly and almost always relinquished their children for adoption. Women who gave birth and kept their children, including the black women who were excluded from most of the unwed-mother homes, faced harsh state policies, including eviction from public housing and denial of public assistance. More on this in Chapter 2 of my book.)

Of all the legal and social changes of the late 1960's and 1970's, none is more significant than the end of "illegitimacy" as a legal category and the reduction in social stigma associated with nonmarital birth. Women now have the choice to bear children without a husband, with the knowledge that the law won't discriminate against those children. They also can choose an abortion...although I doubt Bristol Palin really had that choice, in spite of the fact that the Alaska legislature this year kept a bill requiring parental consent from passing. (You might want to donate to Planned Parenthood Alaska to help keep it that way.)

Still, it's no surprise that the daughter of a prominent abstinence-only conservative is pregnant. Abstinence-only sex education doesn't work. Meanwhile, we haven't heard a date for the wedding, so I'm thinking this marriage plan is, well, somewhat last minute. You see, if Bristol wanted to raise this baby on her own --like the teenage girls in Gloucester, MA -- this story would be playing completely differently.

AN ARKANSAS INITIATIVE THAT MUST BE DEFEATED!

After a hiatus for my summer vacation, I'm back...and with some urgent news. Arkansas voters will have an initiative on their November ballot that, if it passes, will ban all unmarried couples from adopting children or becoming foster parents. That's right. An unmarried heterosexual couple will have to marry, and a same-sex couple will be completely boxed out. (The initiative makes clear that only marriages recognized in Arkansas -- those between one man and one woman -- count). Also, as the words of the initiative make clear, a person will be unable to adopt or foster a child as an individual if he or she is living with an unmarried partner of any sex! This initiative is based on the right-wing marriage movement ideology that blames all our social problems on the decline of life-long heterosexual marriage...ideology I critique in my book.

The coalition fighting this needs your help now! Please get involved with Arkansas Families First.

WHAT'S IN THE NAME?

Another book about marriage came to my attention this weekend: "The Marriage Benefit: The Surprising Rewards of Staying Together, by psychologist Mark O'Connell. The title sounds close to that of "The Case for Marriage," Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagaher's book that I blast in my book for its "marriage promotion" propaganda and that Bella DePaulo skewers in her book, "Singled Out."

So imagine my surprise to hear what Dr. O'Connell said on Tom Ashbrook's On Point on public radio. A caller said she would not marry her male partner because same-sex couples cannot marry. She also said she would not marry because she is bisexual and if her partner had been a woman she would be unable to marry her. Here's how the author responded: "Everything I wrote in the book really applies in a broader sense to the matter of intimate commitment....I wouldn't sit here and argue that one has to be formally and conventionally married in order to have the kind of benefits that come from intimacy....What we are talking about it here is what is it about sustained intimate commitment that can bring you things that are actually quite unique?"

So why call the book, "The Marriage Benefit?" Why not call it "The Intimate Commitment Benefit?" I think I know the answer. The name marriage sells. It resonates in a culture that has been inundated by the claims of the "marriage movement" and government-sponsored "marriage promotion" that the decline of marriage causes our social problems. It would actually be a radical claim in our culture that intimate commitment brings the same benefits that marriage brings. The author even said he believes in divorce! You wouldn't know it from the book title. I'm sorry this author -- and his publisher - chose not to make the more radical and nuanced claim in the title of the book itself.

THE LIES BEHIND "MARRIAGE PROMOTION"

The bus shelters in my city, Washington, DC, are plastered with full-length posters of brides and grooms and simply stated messages like "Married people earn more money" and "Marriage works" and "Kids with married parents do better in school." This public relations campaign is one more example of "marriage promotion," the activities that the federal government funds to the tune of $750 million. The message behind these efforts is that all our social problems -- poverty, illiteracy, chronic illness, substance abuse, violence, infant mortality, and so on -- are caused by the decline of life-long heterosexual marriage. This message is a lie. Two excellent sources for the truth are Bella DePaulo's book, Singled Out, and a report from the SIECUS public policy office, Legalized Discrimination. In chapter four of my book, Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage, I point out that blaming social problems on those who don't get and stay married relieves both the government and the market of any responsibility for those problems, diverting attention from the public disgrace of income inequality, inadequate health care, and poor schools. Just say "No!" to public funding of marriage promotion! Instead, let's take effective measures to reduce poverty.